Kind of a shame, they’ve always been pretty solid for me.

  • Phalanx@lemmy.nz
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    1 year ago

    Somewhat related - I’m surprised BigPipe is still up and kicking, I’ve been with them for many years now with the expectation they’ll throw us over to Skinny or just directly to Spark at some point but never seems to happen 🤔 there are some slightly cheaper options out there in terms of plans, but I paid a one-off fee for a static IP some time ago and would be a real pain to lose it, especially when most providers these days seem to charge a monthly fee for a static IP rather than a one off cost (presumably because of the shift to CG-NAT)

    • BlueÆther@no.lastname.nz
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      1 year ago

      one-off fee for a static IP some time ago and would be a real pain to lose it, especially when most providers these days seem to charge a monthly fee for a static IP rather than a one off cost (presumably because of the shift to CG-NAT)

      I got moved to CG-NAT and complained that my phone backup to my home server stopped working - “oh sorry, how can we fix that for you?”

      Free static thanks - and it worked

    • Dave@lemmy.nzM
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      1 year ago

      Bigpipe is owned by Spark. I feel this is different, like MyRepublic are staying but they don’t want to do NZ internet anymore.

      I think Spark recognised the value of having different brands to hit different markets, but they still get the benefits of economy of scale. E.g. routers all shipped from same warehouse but on different box depending on ISP brand, one call center that tells staff what ISP you’re calling to give the correct greeting, etc. They probably also think it’s funny when people get angry about something and run to a different ISP without realising it’s also Spark.

      but I paid a one-off fee for a static IP some time ago and would be a real pain to lose it, especially when most providers these days seem to charge a monthly fee for a static IP rather than a one off cost (presumably because of the shift to CG-NAT)

      They charge the monthly fee because people pay it. CG-NAT isn’t even that common, and IPs generally don’t change unless you restart your router. But these days if you’re ok with cloudflare then it’s pretty common to use Cloudflare Tunnels, which make an outbound connection to cloudflare to remove the need for port forwarding and a public IP.

      • Phalanx@lemmy.nz
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, hence I thought Spark might try and finish up the BigPipe brand and wrap it into Skinny 🤷‍♂️ all the DNS servers etc. all point to Spark infr. now anyway. Same concept as people running off to different insurance companies without realising they’re mostly underwritten by the same set of corporates anyway 😂

        • Dave@lemmy.nzM
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          1 year ago

          They probably have data that shows they keep more customers if they have the different brands because people like to swap for deals. Probably make a fortune on the $15 router shipping fee when they surely don’t pay more than $3 under their bulk contracts.